


Warming Up

by yaycoffee



Series: LWS Trope Bingo [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, Schmoop, Sherlock is a moron, mike knows what's up, nutter!sherlock, takes john a bit longer, trope bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-12 22:41:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2127219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yaycoffee/pseuds/yaycoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sherlock is a moron and John is a different sort of moron and Mike knows what's up.  Or, the one where Sherlock has to freeze his arse off to get a little action.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warming Up

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [letswritesherlock Trope Bingo Challenge](http://letswritesherlock.tumblr.com/post/92844722125/challenge-15-trope-bingo-how-does-one-play). (Card 1, prompt: huddle for warmth)
> 
> I am organizing all the stories I write for the LWS Challenge into a series. The stories will be one-off pieces with unconnected timelines and plot lines.

John rubs wearily at his eyes, closing them tightly against the fluorescent glow of his computer monitor. _Flu season can go fuck itself_ , he thinks, and when he opens his eyes again, they fall to the bottom right corner of the screen to check the time. It’s been time to go for over three hours now, and he’s still not finished up. He hadn’t had a moment for paperwork in the onslaught of patients today, which was bad enough _without_ having half the staff off ill as well. He should press on through, get this all done, but as he looks around, listening to the whining buzz of the lights overhead and the soft whir of the heating cycling off, he thinks he might actually go mad if he stays in this office for even one minute longer. So he saves the file he’s got open and shuts down the computer. He throws on his coat and sets the alarm on the way out.

The outside chill hits him like a physical blow, stealing the breath from his lungs as it curls in front of him like smoke. He wraps his scarf tighter, does his jacket buttons up the rest of the way. His normal bus route has shut down for the evening, so he walks quickly to the Tube station, thankful for the warmth as he descends the steps. His phone pings with a text alert, and he checks it, expecting (hoping) Sherlock, but it’s from Mike Stamford. _Been too long, mate. Fancy a pint?_

John doesn’t hesitate. _God yes. Just leaving work now. Need to stop off home for a new shirt. Vomit on this one—not mine._

Mike’s response is almost instant. _You’ve had a rough one. I’ll come to you. Thornbury. 9:00._

 _Excellent,_ John fires off just as the train pulls in.

When he reaches the front steps of 221, it is to Sherlock sitting on them, elbows on his knees and fingers steepled beneath his chin. “All right, Sherlock?” he asks.

“Fine,” Sherlock answers, but his voice is distant. John would ask why he’s sitting out in the cold, but he reckons if Sherlock wanted to be inside, that’s where he would be. He doesn’t follow John inside, so John shrugs his shoulders and shucks his jacket downstairs, pulling shirttails from his trousers as he climbs up to the flat. He heads straight for the bathroom, scrubbing at his face and neck with the water on as hot as he can stand. A shower would be better, but he doesn’t fancy walking to the pub with damp hair; this will have to do. He feels a bit more human as he climbs the further flight of stairs to his bedroom where he changes his shirt and jumper after tossing the dirty ones into the hamper.

Sherlock is still sat on the steps when he leaves for the pub. “You’re going to catch your death out here, you know,” he says.

“The duct system is too _narrow_ ,” Sherlock replies, muttering into his own fingers.

“Meeting Mike at Thornbury’s. Care to join?”

“But, oh—but the alarm code!” Sherlock replies, clapping once in front of his face. But almost instantly, his brow creases. He runs his hands through his hair, back to front. “No, no, no—would never work.”

“Right,” John says. “Go inside, would you? You can carry on like a nutter in there just as well, with the added bonus of _not_ catching bronchitis. I’ll be back in a bit. Maybe you can talk me through it then?”

“Stilts!” Sherlock says.

John gives it up, pulling his scarf over his mouth as he walks. And it’s started drizzling. Perfect. He walks faster.

Five minutes later, he’s inside, and Mike’s already waiting for him at a table. John orders a stout and some dinner at the bar and joins him. Mike raises his glass at him. “No Sherlock?” he asks. He always asks, though Sherlock rarely joins a pub night.

“No. He’s working a case that apparently requires him to freeze his bollocks off and frighten the neighbours.”

Mike laughs, taking a pull from his lager.

“So,” John says. “How are Donna and the kids? Your oldest is what—seven now?”

“Just turned eight last Thursday.”

“Shit, you’re old,” John deadpans.

“Too right. We did the whole cake and balloons thing and had about one million kids from Emma’s class over to stain the carpets and sofa the colour of blueberry squash.” He’s smiling as he talks. “It was a good do, though. They made fairy wands and sang Disney songs. Pretty sure I’ll be finding glitter in my hair until I’m about eighty.”

John laughs. “I know what you mean. Last week, Sherlock decided he needed to test blunt-force impact patterns by filling mannequin heads with cherry jelly and whacking them with a cricket bat. Red slime everywhere. Got a massive glob of it in my hair two days later as I was reading the paper—it had fallen from the bloody ceiling.”

Mike snorts into his glass just as the bartender comes to the table with John’s steak and ale pie and a plate of chips for Mike. They talk about rugby as they tuck in. John demolishes his pie, and Mike gets them another round. John asks about teaching, and Mike speaks fondly of his students and classes but does say, “You know—it’s worrying. Every year they’re getting lazier and lazier. It’s like the internet has turned them all into idiots,” Mike says. “Can’t spend half an hour doing a bit of old-fashioned research.”

“Don’t think it’s just the kids, though. I know a lanky tit who texted me in the kitchen from the living room to hand him a book from the coffee table. He was on the sodding sofa!”

“Reaching is tedious, John,” Mike says, imitating Sherlock’s drawl. John nearly spits out his beer.

“But no—he’s not always like that,” John says, feeling a bit like a wanker that all he’s done is complain. “He actually wrote a song for Mrs Hudson’s birthday last month. He worked on it for ages.” John smiles, thinking about Sherlock painstakingly making notes and fussing with the melody for weeks before he was satisfied. “It was amazing. He brought his violin to Angelo’s and played in front of the whole restaurant. Everyone clapped. And you know, I think he actually blushed.” John takes a sip of his drink and notices that Mike is just… staring at him.

“What?”

“Nothing. Seeing anyone?” he asks.

John lets out a humourless chuckle. “Oh, yeah. ‘M having to beat them off with a stick. Women absolutely love coming back to a flat that reeks of noxious gas or is filled with the stink of putrefying muscle tissue. Really sets the mood.” John realises his drink is done, so he goes off to get one last round for them.

Mike asks after Harry, and John tells him that she’s doing better, has been sober for almost a year—new job, new girlfriend. John listens as Mike talks about the Spanish holiday he and Donna are planning for the spring. John tells him about a case that took him and Sherlock to the beach at Great Yarmouth and how Sherlock had managed to catch the kidnapper they were after and got the little boy home safe. John doesn’t talk about how they’d had an extra day there and how he and Sherlock had actually had a lovely, normal day at the beach after, full of too much sun and candy floss.

Before John knows what’s happened, the bartender is shouting for last call. It’s gone two hours. He and Mike bid their farewells, vowing to not let it go so long before doing this again.  Mike cuffs him on the arm when he’s getting into his taxi, and with a wink tells him, “Get on home to your mad scientist.” 

John feels his head tilt. What’s _that_ supposed to mean?  The taxi drives off before John can say anything, so John shrugs his shoulders to himself and starts the chilly walk home, bending his head down to keep his face out of the drizzle.

The only thing remotely comforting about walking up to find Sherlock smoking on the front steps when he returns is that, at some point, Sherlock had to have gone inside to get them. He’s got his scarf around his neck, but no coat or gloves. His grey button-down is rolled up to his elbows and is dark with wet from the weather.

“ _What_ are you doing?” John asks when he approaches, his own teeth chattering from the five minute walk from the pub. He can’t imagine Sherlock is even remotely functional.

Sherlock exhales, his trail of mingled smoke and misted breath nearly opaque in the lamplight. “Smoking,” he says. He flicks his ash, and the entire thing breaks from the damp of the paper. Sherlock frowns, nearly a pout. “They’re all wet now.”

“That’s it,” John says with some finality, taking the sodden fag end in Sherlock’s hand and chucking it away. “Up you get. You’re not staying out here any longer.” John nearly recoils from the cold when his hand wraps around Sherlock’s arm to haul him up.

Sherlock doesn’t protest as he lets John manhandle him up to the flat, supporting his cold weight against his side as Sherlock’s frozen feet fail to master the gross motor skills of climbing the stairs. Sherlock’s leg is like a block of ice against his own, even through the thick fabric of his jeans. The arm around his shoulders is a dead weight, and when Sherlock tips his head toward him, an icy trickle of water drips from Sherlock’s fringe down John’s cheek. _Jesus_.

With some effort, John manages to get the door of the flat open and Sherlock on the sofa with a blanket. He finds a towel in the bathroom and some fresh pajamas in Sherlock’s room. In the living room, Sherlock has finally started shivering, hands clutching tightly to the blanket as his entire body convulses as though he’s having a fit.

“I’m _cold_ , John,” Sherlock grits out through chattering teeth. John sets the towel and clothes on the coffee table.

“That’s what happens when you sit out in the freezing drizzle for two hours, genius.”

A staccato groan comes from Sherlock’s throat. His lips are nearly blue. John feels something inside his chest twist at the sight. Sherlock may be the world’s biggest moron, but he’s paying for it dearly. He looks absolutely miserable.

“Right. Can you get your shirt off?” John smiles. “I mean—not to sound… but—we’ve got to get you out of these wet clothes.”  If Sherlock recognised the cheesy line, he doesn’t let on. He simply continues to clutch the blanket to his shoulders, fighting against the clacking of his teeth by trying to clamp down on his jaw.

John sighs, bringing his hands to cover Sherlock’s, prying the blanket from them. Sherlock grunts, but allows it. He undoes Sherlock’s scarf and tosses it to the other end of the sofa. “Can you do your own buttons?” Sherlock tries, but his fingers won’t cooperate with him, stuttering uselessly against the fabric. He growls in frustration.

“Here,” John says. “I’ll do it,” and he does, working as quickly as he can to get buttons through buttonholes that have apparently managed to shrink with the wet. When he finally gets them all undone, the fabric sticks to Sherlock’s skin as though it were glued on. John peels it away with an unpleasant, sucking _squelch_. He tosses the thing away to the floor, where it lands in a sodden lump.

John shifts his hand to Sherlock’s back to get him to sit up a bit, the skin beneath his palm and fingers clammy and _ice_ -cold. Sherlock grunts again at the contact, this time leaning into John’s touch.

“F-f-feels nic-ce,” he says. “Wa-ar-mm-m.” John can’t help but quirk his lips into a small smile. Sherlock is rarely so vulnerable, so straight-forward about the needs of his body. John rubs his back a bit for some friction, and though he can’t tell any difference in the temperature of Sherlock’s skin under his hand, Sherlock’s eyes close and he lets out a shaky sigh. Something like emotion makes its way into John’s throat; he swallows against it as he reaches for the dry tee-shirt. Sherlock lets him pull it over his head. It reminds him a bit of dressing one of Harry’s babydolls when he was a kid—the way Sherlock’s arms fairly refuse to bend, and he has to stretch the fabric out in odd angles to get them through the sleeves.

Next, trousers. John doesn’t even bother asking as his hands find the hook and zip. He keeps his eyes averted when Sherlock presses his freezing belly into the warmth of John’s knuckles. John fights an unsettling impulse to flatten his palms against Sherlock’s stomach, and instead, clears his throat, maintains a medical, professional façade as he peels this wet fabric away, too. The top isn’t too bad, but the hems are so soaked that he has to get socks off first before the trousers will budge from Sherlock’s ankles.

John closes his eyes and steels himself for what he knows he’s got to do next. He reaches up to feel Sherlock’s pants, hand flat against Sherlock’s left arse cheek. They are, thankfully, dry. John’s thumb, without his permission, rubs against the jutting block of ice that is Sherlock’s hipbone. Sherlock sighs again, mumbles something incoherent as John catches himself. He pulls his hand away quickly, grabbing the pajama bottoms and working Sherlocks’ uncooperative legs into them. When he’s got them worked up to his thighs, Sherlock lifts his hips, and instantly, John feels heat rise in his cheeks. John turns his face sharply to the ceiling. He takes a breath and pulls them the rest of the way up without looking. When he’s done, his hands stubbornly refuse to leave the freezing skin of Sherlock’s waist until he expressly commands them to, busying them by reaching for the towel on the table.

He unfolds it and brings it to Sherlock’s still-dripping hair as he moves next to Sherlock on the sofa, kneeling on the cushion for a little extra height, leaning in close so he can see what he’s doing. Sherlock presses a freezing, vibrating shoulder against John’s belly. John tries to ignore it as he fits his hands around the shape of Sherlock’s skull and moves the towel gently front to back as he dries Sherlock’s fringe and forehead, then crown, then nape, dropping his height as he goes.  

He notices that Sherlock’s teeth have stopped chattering when Sherlock turns to him, tilting his face up to John’s. He’s close enough that John feels Sherlock’s shaky breath against his heated face, and he doesn’t know why, but his hands come up to rest against the sides of Sherlock’s neck. Christ, he’s still so cold. Sherlock hums, stretching, pressing into the warmth of John’s fingers. Sherlock is still shivering, but less so now, which John takes as a positive sign. He rubs little circles just below Sherlock’s jaw with his thumbs, feeling himself smile. “Better?” he asks.

Sherlock nods. John drops his hands and shifts a bit, sitting down properly.

“Still cold, though,” Sherlock replies. He presses in even closer to John. “You’re warm,” and when he shifts forward, brushing the freezing tip of his nose just behind John’s ear, it is John’s turn to shiver. Sherlock presses his face into John’s neck, and John can feel every press of skin—lips, cheek, chin—and it’s _cold_ , but it sends a spike of something like molten lava running from the very top of his head straight down to his toes. He lets out a gasp before he can stop himself. What is happening?

“Sherlock,” he says. But, he doesn’t know what the rest of the sentence should be. _Stop_? No—he doesn’t want Sherlock to stop. Sherlock moves in impossibly closer, nearly onto John’s lap, nuzzling as he moves his face from John’s neck down to his chest, where he inhales deeply. He fits his hands into John’s armpits, which… is weird.

John’s hands come up to Sherlock’s nape, fingers threading through damp curls as Sherlock exhales long and slow, hot and wonderful, against his solar plexus. Sherlock’s body against his is still cold, as he moves a leg over to straddle John’s lap, but the weight is… _good_. He moves his hands to Sherlock’s legs, rubbing them warm from thigh to calf, wrapping his fingers around the jutting bone of Sherlock’s still-freezing ankle, arch, toes. Sherlock hums again, presses himself into John, cold toes against the sides of his thighs when John puts his hands on Sherlock’s back, stroking slow circles for comfort, for warmth—but really, it’s muscle and taut flesh and so much of what John never allowed himself to want before. He’s drowning in it.

John lets his own hands continue to roam down Sherlock’s back, his sides, his arms, building friction, heat beginning to rise. And, Sherlock continues to nuzzle at John’s chest. Oh, God—John’s really feeling it now, _everywhere_. He wants nothing more than to take the sides of Sherlock’s face and press their lips together, but he steels himself, reminds himself that this is meant to be about keeping Sherlock well, keeping him comfortable. He shifts a bit in his seat. Sherlock moves his head upwards, cool lips against John’s collarbone, his throat, his chin, and then—against his mouth.

Oh, God. It’s everything. Everything he never thought about wanting. Everything he’s _ever_ wanted. And, then John stops thinking at all, opening his mouth, taking Sherlock’s bottom lip between his and sucking—moving to his upper lip, tongue tracing the soft skin behind it. Sherlock groans, and John feels it in his bones. Nothing is cold now, not Sherlock, and definitely not himself. His hands move back to Sherlock’s arse, this time to haul him closer, and Sherlock complies, thigh moving to exactly to the right spot between John’s thighs.

“God,” John says.

Sherlock hums.

Sherlock’s tongue is in his mouth, and his knee is pressing against his groin, and John is sweating, bucking. He needs more. He needs to stop. He is going to come in his pants like a teenager. He is too aroused to care.

“Oh!” Sherlock gasps, breaking the kiss with a wet _smack_. “Oh!” And then, he is scrambling off John’s lap, rifling through the sodden heap of discarded clothing, tossing the shirt away.

“What?” John manages, witless, watching Sherlock wrestle with his trousers until he can pull the mobile from the pocket.

“Rock climber!” Sherlock says. “Rappel line.” His fingers fly over the keypad. There is the _woosh_ of a sent message, and then Sherlock tosses the phone onto the coffee table and leaves the room.

John blinks at the space where Sherlock had been. He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face as he gives his body a moment to calm down. He feels his throat pull tight, blinking against whatever is making his eyes sting. Though his cheeks are very warm under his fingers, he feels colder than he can ever remember being.

“Well?” John hears Sherlock say from the corridor outside his bedroom door.

John sighs—the game is on, apparently. He tries to leave his embarrassment on the sofa when he stands. If Sherlock can let it drop so quickly, well then—he’s going to have to figure out how to let it go as well. He clears his throat and turns, makes his feet take the three steps that carry him to the doorway to face Sherlock.

But Sherlock is not, to John’s surprise, shoving his arms into a fresh shirt. No—in fact, Sherlock is standing rather awkwardly outside his bedroom door, looking a bit lost. When his eyes light on John, he smiles. “Good,” he says. He reaches out and takes John by the wrist, hauling him close. “You’re coming,” he says against John’s lips, and John smiles wide as he lets Sherlock lead him inside.

 

~End~

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [youngdarling](http://archiveofourown.org/users/youngdarling) for helping me make this story better with her Scary Red Pen and some really good advice, for letting me whine about cheesy titles, and for helping me with the summary. All the things, basically. Thank you for ALL THE THINGS!


End file.
